If it’s true that White House officials are clashing over how hard a negotiating stance to take with countries like China over trade, this development suggests that the hawks might have the upper hand right now.

Who should be worried

• Foreign companies, particularly Chinese ones, seeking to buy American counterparts. (Think also of Broadcom, which is legally headquartered in Singapore and which is pursuing Qualcomm — and has assiduously courted Mr. Trump.)

Scana has struggled since this summer when it abandoned two unfinished nuclear reactors in South Carolina. The project was once expected to showcase advanced nuclear technology but was plagued by delays and cost overruns.

Scana’s shares are down more than 40 percent since midsummer.

Height Securities via Axios warns that the deal has ways to go before it closes.

“In this case especially, Dominion will have to pull out all the stops to demonstrate that their offer is the best deal for customers, particularly given the uncertainty facing [SCANA’s] rates over the coming months. We’re looking for a reaction from the Governor as well as House Speaker Jay Lucas and the PSC commissioners for early signs of whether Dominion’s proposal will fall flat.”

Underwriting for free.

That’s essentially what is happening in Asia. The Wall Street Journal reports that three state-owned Indian companies paid a dollar in underwriting fees to seven banks, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, for their work selling a total of $1.3 billion in dollar-denominated bonds.

While those fees may be unusually low, they highlight a trend in the region: “Underwriting revenue, while also up from a year ago, isn’t keeping up with the accelerating pace of Asian corporate bond issuance.

That is raising concerns that underwriting “could become largely unprofitable” in Asia.

In the United States, companies, on average, pay fees of 0.7 percentage point for an investment-grade corporate bond issue and 1.2 percentage points for underwriting a junk bond offering.

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Andrew White for The New York Times

Peter Thiel’s boost to Bitcoin.

Where Bitcoin traded early yesterday: $13,833

Where Bitcoin is trading this morning: $15,202

What happened: It was probably the revelation that the venture capitalist Peter Thiel has made a big bet on the digital currency.

From Rob Copeland of the WSJ:

Founders Fund, the venture-capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, has amassed hundreds of millions of dollars of the volatile cryptocurrency, people familiar with the matter said. The bet has been spread across several of the firm’s most recent funds, the people said, including one that began investing in mid-2017 and made bitcoin one of its first investments.

Has Founders Fund made money? The WSJ reports, citing unidentified sources, that the firm bought about $15 million in Bitcoin and that its stake is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

• John O’Rourke, the head of Riot Blockchain, a small biotech-turned-digital currency company, has made at least $712,000 on price increase of more than 60 percent after the company added blockchain to its name. (CNBC)

• The penny-stock company TGI Solar Power Group enjoyed a surge in its stock price (though not quite what Long Blockchain, nee Long Island Iced Tea, experienced last month) after it announced a move into digital currencies. Its stock went as high as 0.2 cent. (Bloomberg)

• Speaking of Long Blockchain, the company has added two new board members as part of its pivot from cold beverages to cryptocurrency. (WSJ)

• Criminals are turning to a new breed of virtual currency, because Bitcoin’s underlying technology can work against them. (Bloomberg)

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Drew Angerer/Getty Images North America

The problem that Orrin Hatch’s retirement poses for Trump.

It isn’t just the fact that Mitt Romney, a sometimes vociferous critic of the president, is expected to run for Mr. Hatch’s Senate seat. It’s that another Republican lawmaker who has been relatively friendly to Mr. Trump is stepping down before the 2018 midterm elections — which could whittle down the G.O.P.’s control of Congress.

More from Jonathan Martin of the NYT:

Mr. Romney’s potential ascent is particularly alarming to the White House because the former presidential candidate has an extensive political network and could use the Senate seat as a platform to again seek the nomination. Even if he were not to run again for president, a Senator Romney could prove a pivotal swing vote, impervious to the entreaties of a president he has scorned and able to rally other Trump skeptics in the chamber.

He’s running, probably: While Mr. Romney didn’t issue a statement on his potential candidacy, he did change his location on Twitter from “Massachusetts” to “Holladay, Utah.”

Also worth noting

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The Washington flyaround

• Republican and Democratic lawmakers will meet today with White House officials to try and reach a spending deal before Jan. 19 — or face a government shutdown. (NYT)

• The founders of the research firm Fusion GPS, which has been at the heart of the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, criticized Republican attacks on those inquiries in an NYT Op-Ed. (NYT)

The latest in workplace misconduct news.

• The Showtime political documentary series “The Circus” will return in April without its most recognizable star, Mark Halperin, whose career was felled by allegations of sexual harassment and assault. He will be replaced by the CBS News anchor Alex Wagner and the political analyst Mark McKinnon. (NYT)

• Pete Wells asks who can clean up the restaurant industry and wonders when prominent restaurant figures will admit that the way the industry treats women has damaged careers and lives. (NYT)

Can oil prices continue their quiet ascent?

Oil is at its highest level since 2015, edging up this morning toward $67 a barrel. Geopolitical risks, like protests in Iran, have prompted buying, while production curbs by OPEC members have tightened supply.

While global oil demand is forecast to rise by about 1.4m barrels a day next year, growing US shale output combined with new projects in Brazil and Canada are broadly expected to see non-OPEC supply rise by a similar amount.

Hedge funds are, however, betting that prices are likely to head higher, with some arguing that geopolitical unrest — including in OPEC member Venezuela, where oil output has been falling — should keep prices well supported.

We have been actively working to expand and diversify our board, and we welcome input from Elliott to identify a strong director candidate to further strengthen Alexion’s board.

The context: Michael broke the news last month that Elliott had built up a stake in the drug maker and was weighing a proxy fight if the company didn’t change elements of its business strategy.

The broader landscape: For companies under pressure from activists, resistance requires deft maneuvering, according to Breakingviews. Procter & Gamble’s expensive, hard-line defense against Nelson Peltz failed, but both G.M. and Automatic Data Processing have shown that fending off hedge funds is possible.

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Toru Hanai/Reuters

Quote of the Day

“It’s like your neighbor having a suitcase stuffed with $1 million in cash, but you’ll only pay him $500,000 for it because you think he’ll lose the rest on the way to your house.”

• Lyft has teamed up with the self-driving software company Apriv and will be showing off a fully-automated ride-hailing service at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month. (Bloomberg)

• Michael Gelband, the former head of credit at Millennium Management, plans to start his own hedge fund in the next six months, after resolving a hiring dispute with Millennium’s founder, Izzy Englander. (Bloomberg)

• China is suspending the production of more than 500 car models that do not meet its fuel economy standards as part of efforts to reduce emissions in the world’s largest auto market. (NYT)

• The practice of putting nursing homes and related businesses in separate limited liability corporations and partnerships has gained popularity as the industry has consolidated, making it harder to hold owners personally responsible if something goes wrong. (NYT)

• The pharmaceutical industry may be under attack over drug prices, but the problem has splintered and made it difficult to identify who is responsible. Meanwhile, Scott Gottlieb, the F.D.A. commissioner, has been following through on the president’s fiery rhetoric about rising drug prices. (WaPo, Bloomberg)

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